The Sacred Art of Eating

Anchovies. Yes indeed.

• Turkey Fillets with Anchovy, Gherkin and Dill, and
• Mustard Caper Sauce for Broccoli

The big fat shameful secret of my foodie existence is that I do not like anchovies. I had always hoped that the time would come, that I would turn into a grown up and suddenly discover a taste for them. They are on the exclusive list- possibly in Gold position- of the three foods I would not thank you for feeding me (Melon and Baked Beans take the other two slots). Dougal shares this aversion to the small salty things.

However, there are three recipes in the book (plus a salad dressing) which use anchovies, and so Dougal and I agreed that 2008 might be the year that we come to appreciate them. Last night was our first attempt.

If truth be told, I probably didn’t give the anchovies a true chance to shine in this dish. The turkey is flash fried in olive oil that you have first cooked some anchovies in, but my pan was a bit too hot when I added the anchovies, and so I reckon its possible I cooked all of the fishy flavour out of them. You got wee wiffs when eating, but otherwise they only added meatiness. Of course, there is a chance that that is all they were meant to add.

Over all, whilst a bit fiddly to make, this was a very tasty and relatively easy to put together meal. There are lots of bits of measure out- anchovy, gherkin, dill for the turkey, butter, mustard, lemon juice, capers for the broccoli- plus you have to marshall the boiling of potatoes and the cooking of broccoli alongside it all. However, I think the effort would definitely be worth it if a)there were two of you cooking or b) you were cooking for friends.

Dill and Gherkins are my flavours du jour at the moment, and as predicted in Nigella Express contrasted well with the plainer turkey. The capery broccoli was nice but I reckon I’d add a bit more lemon juice in future. We still have turkey in the freezer and anchovies in the fridge, so I guess we’ll revisit this sooner rather than later.

So…one anchovy down…some more to go.

Sorry for the lack of posts; we’ve been incredibly busy this last week or so and consequently haven’t really been cooking. I don’t even have anything left that we’ve cooked but I’ve not told you about!

However, the matter is in hand. I have a shopping list, and, all being well, it’ll be Nigella Express for tea both tonight and tomorrow!

Last weekend Dougal attempted a new kind of bread, ciabatta. This required making a starter, a biga, and letting it ferment for 24 hours.

The results were smashing. They looked and tasted like authentic ciabatta and, unlike many, weren’t especially chewy or hard to get your teeth through, which when you have a jaw as finicky as mine is an important consideration.

We ate these all week- with mozarella and tomato and basil for lunch at work one day, plain old cheddar and tomato the next. The highlight though, was night two, where we grilled ‘em, rubbed the raw surface with garlic, and then topped with chopped, seeded tomatoes, freshly griddled bacon, and a generous sprinkling of basil. Brill!

A sandwich of duck breast, pomegranate and mint, on home-made (for the bruschetta) pain de campagne. No, I wasn’t sharing!

With K and K staying over after our Saturday night dinner do, I needed a suitably swish breakfast to keep up the illusion of domestic godessliness.

• Breakfast Bruschetta

I nearly made two recipes for this breakfast, but felt one would suffice. Either I was grossly wrong or it was very good, as I ended up making two batches! What makes these breakfast bruschetta isn’t very clear, but we ain’t quibbling. They were yummy for breakfast, with a big cup of coffee.

 Dougal had hand-crafted some pain de campagne specially (including overnight ferment to make the sour dough) and I had hand-selected some lovely ripe fuerte avocados in waitrose. The addition of some olive oil, and good tomatoes, and lime juice and parsley for the avocado ones, and we had a highly sophisticated brekkie. It’s not always like this at our place, I promise!

With K over from Canada, we needed a properly celebratory dinner. Cocktails and three courses were the order of the day!

• Duck Breasts with Pomegranate and Mint
• Mellow Meatballs
• Cherry Cheesecake

Our salad starter, seared duck breasts on a bed of rocket and chard, scattered with pomegranate seeds, pan juices and mint leaves, has to go down as one of the great unexpected sucesses of the challenge so far. I honestly hadn’t expected it to be much cop; it seemed little more than an array of individual ingredients with nothing to tie them together.

How wrong I was. The juices from the duck and pomegranate dressed the salad beautifully, and the contrast between the fruity seeds and the ripped up mint was heavenly. As an added bonus this was really very easy to make in advance. Itwas a great start to the meal, served alongside an overflowing bowl of sesame plaits and poppyseed stars made by my resident bread chef Dougal.

The meatballs didn’t, to my mind, turn out all that differently to the Red Prawn and Mango Curry I did for Dougal’s birthday. I suppose both use Red Thai curry paste and coconut milk ( and I did forget to add the honey to the meatballs) but I was a bit unimpressed. They weren’t very mellow either. Filling though, which was good on a wet night, but not the sophisticated main I had half-fancied serving everyone.

Pudding was a definite first for me- a genuine chilled cheesecake! Generally it worked well, although there was no way I could have made five digestive biscuits cover the base of my tin, so I doubled that up. The tin also turned out to have a lip in the base (perhaps I had it the wrong way up?) which made serving rather tricky and inelegant!

Over all this cheesecake was nice, it did definitely taste like a bona fide cheesecake, but I felt the topping was lacking. We used the specified Rhapsodie de St Dalfour cherry conserve, but I wouldn’t get it again. I think it needed to be sweeter. Clearly Nigella Lawson and I disagree here, as she says basically any cherry topping with no added sugar will do.

All in, quite a sucessful little dinner party, if not quite as glamorous as it might have been!

I’ve been fortunate enough to have several trips through to the West to see friends of late. The standard of cooking has been very high:

Chickpea and Feta Salad with chilli and (slightly cooked therefore no indigestion) red onion and spring onion

And, by the same sexy chef, a fantastic Carrot Cake (with walnuts on the icing!!)

Then, elsewhere, there was home made strawberry panna cotta. I can only assume this was made with vegetarian gelatine, but it was delicious. The strawberries managed to taste like the smell of strawberry jam cooking in my mum’s kitchen. Brilliant!

The next morning, in honour of (and made possible by) our wonderful, sorely missed already, canadian guest, we had pancakes with proper Maple Syrup.

Thankfully I don’t feel I’ve let the side down too badly. I had Miss Canadia and KK her host over for dinner last week….more on that to come.

There is something of a tradition at my work to do a picnic lunch in the coffee room for anyone leaving. We gave J a particularly fine gastronomic goodbye, I feel! I contributed two dishes.

• Mortadella Pasta Salad
• Crunchy Salad with Hot and Sour Dressing

What a spread there was. I hope I merit such efforts from my colleagues, if/when I leave!

Both the dishes I took were from On the Run, the lunches chapter and both I would eat again for lunch. That said, the crunchy salad would be a bit high faff to make in the morning for lunch for only two- quite a lot of slicing and you have to blanch some of the veg. It also wasn’t quite hot or sour enough for me- I was expecting a really potent kick! More appropriate to put the effort in for a bbq or picnic, I’d have thought.

The mortadella pasta salad was yummy, a dead simple, fairly standard pasta and ham affair with a mustardy dressing. It coped particularly well with my part-making it at home and then assembling it at work. My only gripe would be that I didn’t chop the parsley quite fine enough (perhaps I do need a mezzeluna after all?!?!) but otherwise most satisfactory. I made Dougal a little portion of this on the side as he had most selflessly provided a batch of Spicy Moroccan Rolls for me to take as well.

When staying over at my parents, I might as well say thank you with an awesome breakfast, right?

• Orange French Toast

Last weekend saw D and I head to Dunbar to give two school friends a good send off as they move to the New York for two years. HarveyNick came down with us too, to help out with the dancing-men being always in short supply at ceilidhs- and so it seemed right that I used the opportunity to make a proper breakfast for us all.

I had to start by drying out my mum’s fabulously fresh bread a bit first. Eggy bread really calls for stale loaf but gosh darn we only had fresh. So I sliced the bread up first and laid it out in the sunshine for a bit.

The bread is soused in the standard eggy mixture, but with the luxurious addition of some full cream milk, cinnamon and orange zest. Thereafter it is cooked as normal, but then served drenched in a potent orange syrup of freshly squeezed orange juice and one’s Mother’s finest marmalade.

In the absence of one’s Mother’s finest, we think Golden Shred would be the best bet (Nigella recommends Tiptree but we all think that’s dull!).

Serve with lashings of tea, preferably in a fabulous tea cosy that matches the dish.  Enjoy!

Lunch looked gorgeous in the book, but would it survive a trip to work?

• Chicken Caesar Cornets

I trusted Nigella on this recipe; these little lunch parcels are made with corn tortillas, not wheat. The filling is a caesary mix of worcestershire sauce, mayo, parmesan, chicken and iceberg lettuce and had a satisfying crunch. At the time of making, they looked pretty cool!

However three of the four corn tortillas cracked on parcelling up and looked pretty sad and flat by the time I got mine to work.

They also really had to be wrapped individually in foil/film, rather than just be put in a sandwich box, which I disapprove of on ecological grounds.

I’d eat the salad again. I might re-try the recipe, with wheat tortillas. But I’d probably roll them as wraps, rather than trying the cornets again. So… just one cornetto!